I attended a session at the American Academy of Allergy Asthma & Immunology conference in Philadelphia about food allergy and anaphylaxis led by the highly esteemed Dr. F. Estelle Simons of the University of Manitoba and the former president of the AAAAI.

Her portion of the seminar focused on epinephrine as the cornerstone of treatment for anaphylaxis. She emphasized that epinephrine is on the WHO’s worldwide approved list of drugs because there is no alternative. However, epinephrine delivery is fraught with error on all levels of treatment: from doctors, nurses and hospitals to us, the consumers. Dr. Simons asserted that if there is any so-called failure of this treatment, it is usually because of human error.

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Thanks to the FDA, I now have a clutter-free, neatly organized medicine cabinet for the first time since stockpiling it for the arrival of twin babies. It’s amazing how much stuff you can fit (aka “cram”!) into a tiny medicine closet. Now I’m left like many parents, smack in the middle of cold and flu season with the newfound knowledge that not only are over-the-counter cold and cough medicines not even effective for children under two, they’re potentially dangerous.

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Hack, wheeze, sniffle, sneeze. What spreads faster than office gossip? The office cold.

“Every day, you run a germ gauntlet getting to work and in your workplace,” explains Charles Gerba, Ph.D., microbiologist at the University of Arizona. “Basically, the people before you who were ill laid a germ minefield.”

The common cold and the flu will account for tens of millions of sick days this year, which could cost American businesses as much as $8 billion in paid sick leave, according to global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.

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It’s the week I dread. No, not because I need to cook an edible Easter meal for a house full of guests or attempt to keep the kids busy during spring break. With the heralding of spring comes spring cleaning, and I can’t say I enjoy the task.

If you’re one of the 40 million people who suffer from allergies, particularly dust or chemical sensitivities, spring cleaning can be more than unpleasant — it can be downright dangerous, causing wheezing, sneezing, itchiness, and other allergic reactions. To avoid these problems, follow the general guidelines below before you begin to tackle the room-by-room checklist that follows.

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With Problems Marring This Year’s Flu Season, What’s a Person to Do?

The flu season is underway, with widespread activity reported in the Northeast U.S., the South and in clusters of elderly people, college students, and children.

But what really has health officials working overtime is a drug-resistant strain of influenza that is not responding to Tamiflu, the gold-standard anti-viral medication. In Chicago, at least 10 patients have tested positive for this strain, prompting increased surveillance and a health alert from the Illinois Department of Public Health, suggesting that flu patients in intensive care receive a combination of drugs until their virus can be analyzed.

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January is the month when millions of people make an effort to revamp their health habits. Coincidentally, it’s also the month when many variants of cold and flu viruses - including sinus infections causes by bacteria — rear their ugly heads. Now may be the perfect time to take stock of your health habits and see if they could use some minor modifications.

Here’s a countdown of the seven worst offenses:

7) Going to Work Sick. According to the Harvard Business Review, “presenteeism,” or going to work while ill, cost American companies $150 billion a year. Not only won’t you win points in the popularity department if you’re hacking and wheezing in the middle of the closed-door meeting, it will take longer for your cold to subside if you don’t get the rest your body needs. (If lack of sick days necessitates your going to work, close your office door and email people in lieu of face-time. At the very least, wash your hands before you grab an office bagel.)

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Have you ever wondered why you may have more sneezing, wheezing or cough when around a cat yet, your allergy testto catwasnegative?

Well, a recent European study in the Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicineconcluded that a significant number of people with established allergic sensitivity to indoor and outdoor triggers (but not cat) have lungsthat arehyper-responsive when exposed to environmental cat dander. A special test to measure twitchiness of the lungs, called Methacholine Challenge Test was done on over a thousand subjects in different cities. It was surprising that so many people negative on allergy testing to cat, had more bronchospasm in association with cat exposure compared to cat free environments.

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Read “Food Allergies Stir a Mother to Action” article by New York Times reporter Kim Severson.

I’m a centrist. For example, I believe not in nature VERSUS nurture but that we are a combination of nature AND nurture. Another example, I love when non-medical techniques work o help keep me healthy but am all too happy to take a Z-Pack if nasty bronchitis shows up.

But when it comes to the question of why so many kids NOW have food allergies I just don’t know. Could it be due to the Greenhouse effect or other environmental factors? Perhaps more highly processed, genetically modified, frankenfoods in our American diets? The popular hygiene theory holds that less childhood exposure to bacteria equals immune systems that aren’t working properly, which might account for the sharp increase. Or is there more awareness by medical professionals and parent groups and, thus, more diagnoses of allergies in children? Or could a basic misunderstanding about the difference between food allergies and food intolerance be the culprit?

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I admit it — I buckled under the pressure. Before my kids had even made it out of Pre-K, they ate their first hot school lunch. In their minds, that first bite sent them into the ranks of the “big kids.” In my mind, that first check of the CHICKEN NUGGETS box may have sent them on the road to becoming “big kids,” in a literal sense, like the estimated 25% of American kids who are considered obese.

By obese I don’t mean a one-time jaunt to the Husky Department during that awkward period when you can’t lose the baby fat; I mean obese as in a decades-long public health issue — the first generation of kids who will grow up unhealthier than their parents despite our medical advances, suffering from type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and inflammatory issues in unprecedented numbers.

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During a dinner out last week something happened that reminded me that I am really taking my life into my hands every time I eat away from home. That panic can exacerbate an allergic reaction (or in my case a non-allergic one) and that, without exception, everyone around me needs to know the allergic action plan in case something goes down.

So I was chomping away on my salad, cautiously, after asking the bartender who was serving me three different times in three different ways (which is totally my modus operandi, I remind servers after each course about my allergies), “Are you sure there are no nuts in this salad?”

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